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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27859870">Poison Prince</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account'>orphan_account</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blood, Blood and Injury, Burns, Demonic Possession, Demons, Dreamon Hunters, Dreamons, Exorcisms, Gen, Mild Gore, Scars, Sleepy Boys, Sleepy Boys Inc - Freeform, Trans Floris | Fundy, Trans Toby Smith | Tubbo, lost family, lost parents, occultism</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 23:21:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,733</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27859870</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tubbo is a Dreamon Hunter. It's a big secret, but it's his destiny. Considering... that is what killed his family after all, right?<br/>He never had friends outside of his new family, and when these two interesting fellas take him in and give his life a purpose, he has no intention of saying no.<br/>(CWs in the notes of the first chapter)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>85</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Prologue: Phil's memories</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello everyone and welcome to my latest project. A couple of things at the beginning;<br/>I - The rating. As of now, this story is rated as M, but depending on how it will develop I may downgrade to T or upgrade to E. I don't have the exact way this story will play out set in stone, so I am open to changes like that<br/>II - Shipping. At this point in time, I am not set out to write a romantic relationship (or multiple for that matter) into this story. If I change my mind, however, you should be warned that I am open to writing non-sexual ships other people may find inappropriate. In none of the cases will I be advocating relationships between these people in real life. This fanfiction is about highly abstracted versions of the characters these streamers play, as should be fairly obvious.<br/>III - This takes place in an alternative universe in which the Sleepy Bois are related, similar to the established canon. Fundy will not be Wilbur's son in this story. Other family relationships that are not based on canon will feature in this story, but for the sake of not spoiling this to you, I will not disclose them here.<br/>IV - Tubbo and Fundy are ftm/transmasc guys in this story because I need to project my own issues onto characters/people I relate to even if it makes no sense. If this offends you, you should've read the tags a little better, buddy.<br/>V - Content Warnings: (This list shall be updated, if anything comes up later I have not planned yet)<br/>- blood, bleeding, scars, wounds, burn scars etc<br/>- mild violence and gore<br/>- possible character deaths or implied past deaths?<br/>None of these topics will appear in grotesque, disgusting detail. By the nature of this story, they will appear in most chapters to some extend. If there are scenes that are particularly violent, I will be giving an additionally cw at the start of the given chapter :)</p><p>Now that this is out of the way, please enjoy this stupid little story, I hope you like it at least a little.<br/>See you next time you wonderful people &lt;3</p><p>(PS: This first chapter is unnaturally long for my taste. Expect regular chapters to be around 1200-1500 words)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Phil had always been a very caring man.<br/>
Him and his wife had still been pretty young when their first and second son were born, and with her being very busy with work, Phil took most of the responsibility of raising the boys.<br/>
He wouldn’t have wanted any other way.<br/>
Phil loved being a father and watching his two sons grow up. Both of them were smart, cunning and courageous people, eager to follow in their father’s footsteps and even though countless books could be written about them and their adventures, they won’t be the heroes of this story.<br/>
Phil’s second son Wilbur was already 8 years old when his mother got pregnant for the third time.<br/>
And while Phil loved his third son, Thomas, just as much as his older brothers, he soon learned - raising him would be a lot harder.<br/>
For one, Tommy was alone, with his brothers too old to care for a baby in the house, constantly annoyed that they had to look after what they basically saw as a parasite.<br/>
On the other hand, with three children to balance instead of one or two, Phil had struggle spending as much time with little Tommy as he did with the others.<br/>
Tommy was almost four when their life would change again somehow.</p><p>Phil was out with his youngest running some errands in the city.<br/>
He would’ve almost missed it, but Tommy spotted it right away; in a dark alleyway, sleeping in a big cardboard box lay a little girl.<br/>
She was curled up to a ball like a cat and her dark hair was cut irregularly, which made it hard to tell but she seemed to be about Tommy’s age.<br/>
Phil stepped closer and she woke up. Startled, confused, scared.<br/>
Phil and his wife had agreed on not having another child after Tommy, but he couldn’t not take her with him.<br/>
As she crawled out of the cardboard box and revealed her face, Phil took a step back. Tommy made a noise of confusion and shock.<br/>
A big chunk of the girl’s face seemed to be scarred and burned, half of her scalp was bald and she was missing both eyebrows.<br/>
A normal man would’ve expected her to be the survivor of a fire, but Phil had seen enough dark things in his life to recognize these as the scars of a Dreamon attack.<br/>
He never had seen one of these darkest of nightmare creatures in person, but he knew people who fought them. Courageous men and women, daring to give their life for the safety of society and those that were weaker.<br/>
Dreamon hunters.<br/>
Not only did they fight these beasts from the darkest crevices of the bottomless abyss, but they also managed to keep their existence a secret from most members of society.<br/>
Those that lived long enough were just as scarred as this little kid was.<br/>
Phil was unable to speak and just looked at her, as she slowly stood up, the green mens’ shirt she was wearing looking like a dress she found in the dumpster and looked up at him.<br/>
Her eyes were clear and dark but not haunting or sad. Neither were they happy or excited. But he knew she trusted him.<br/>
She stepped a little closer and gently wrapped her little fingers around the thumb of Phil’s extended hand.<br/>
And from then on, they basically had four kids.</p><p>The name Phil and his wife gave her didn’t matter that much, basically, everyone was calling her Tubbo.<br/>
That is what Tommy called her since he had trouble with her actual name and everyone went with it.<br/>
Tubbo never called either Phil or his wife “Mum” or “Dad”, preferring just their first names. She would also never call any of Phil’s sons her “brothers”.<br/>
Tubbo was part of the family, there was no doubt about that. But she remembered her old family. At least she remembered she’d had one.<br/>
Phil figured out what must’ve happened easily; the parents and possible siblings must’ve been murdered by a Dreamon that somehow found his way into the realm of the living. Little Tubbo had gotten away. Somehow. Scarred for life, but at least not dead.<br/>
Must’ve hidden in the streets for weeks, maybe months, until Phil and Tommy found her.</p><p>Phil had no experience raising daughters so he didn’t notice Tubbo was acting differently from girls her age. Tubbo and Tommy, being almost the same age, spend all their time together.<br/>
Phil had a pretty laissez-faire approach at parenting, so Tubbo could wear whatever clothes she liked or do any stuff she wanted.<br/>
He remembered one afternoon very clearly when she came home from primary school.<br/>
“I don’t wanna be a girl, Phil. I wanna be a boy like Tommy. And do stuff with the other boys in my class. But they don’t wanna do stuff with me because I am a girl”<br/>
This happened multiple times and after Phil and his wife had a few talks with little ten-year-old Tubbo and other people who had more experience with stuff like that, they decided to let Tubbo do, what Tubbo wanted.<br/>
“Listen to me, Tubbo”, Phil said, Tubbo on his lap, upset from all the peer pressure and social expectations, Tommy kneeling at his feet and watching the two talk.<br/>
“You want to be a boy? That’s okay. You can be a boy. If you want me or any of the others here to call you a boy and a brother and a boy’s name… we will do that. And if you want the kids and teachers in school to do that, I will tell them to. And if one day, you decide you want to be a girl again… or maybe even something in between, that is okay, too. Because you know what? The most important thing to me and all of us is that you’re happy”<br/>
And from that day on, Tubbo was officially called Toby. But really, everyone still called him Tubbo.</p><p>Phil’s two eldest sons had moved out of the house by the time Tommy and Tubbo were teenagers.<br/>
On one hand, having two instead of four kids around was a lot quieter.<br/>
On the other hand, it really wasn’t, because Tommy wasn’t the one to leave. And he was probably louder than all of his three brothers combined.<br/>
This was also the time when Phil managed to get more professional help for Tubbo who wasn’t taking this ‘female puberty’ thing all too well. They got him hormone blockers when shit really hit the fan and later transitioned to HRT.<br/>
Tommy and Tubbo were a lot closer than Wilbur and Techno ever were, probably because the two older brothers were a lot more confident and could get stuff done on their own, while Tommy and Tubbo really needed each other. Separating them was one of the worst things to happen to them.<br/>
Yet, when they went on to secondary school, that is exactly what happened.<br/>
They were in different classes most of the time, rarely got to see each other in breaks and as the afternoons got filled more and more with homework and less with leisure, Phil had to watch as both boys slowly grew apart, making them both bitter and lonely in the process.<br/>
He did whatever he could do give them as much space as they needed, but by the time they both were sixteen, almost adults, he really had noticed how much of a loner especially Tubbo had become.</p><p>Techno and Wilbur were chaotic. They often misbehaved, stepped out of line or got into trouble at school. Techno mostly for starting fights with other kids and Wilbur for provoking his teachers until they lost it with his cocky attitude and grin. Tommy even was a little troublemaker, trying to step into his father’s and older brother’s footsteps with the same cocky attitude but a lot less of a backbone so he mostly pulled his head out of the noose before it got too risky.<br/>
But none of them would have disregarded Phil’s rules;<br/>
"Be at home by eight" (ten if they were a little older)<br/>
"Always tell me where you’re going when you’re leaving the house" (most places were okay, he just wanted to make sure)<br/>
"Treat me with respect and so will I"<br/>
"Don’t lie to me. Don’t argue about petty shit"<br/>
"Always talk to me if you think you are in trouble, I will always help you out. No matter how big of a mess you’ve caused"<br/>
No, of all of his kids, it was sixteen-year-old Tubbo who broke these rules. And not just once.</p><p>Tubbo snuck out a lot. He didn’t wag school for it, but he often came home a lot later than Tommy who had the same number of periods that day.<br/>
Phil suspected Tubbo might have a girlfriend or boyfriend he didn’t want his parents to know about, but as it became a regular for him to just… not come home in time, he got annoyed with it.<br/>
One Friday night of a particularly stressful week, he came up into the attic, where Tubbo’s room was, to find it completely empty.<br/>
He checked on Tommy, who was there, playing video games as always.<br/>
“Tubbo’s not here? But… really? No, Dad… I really don’t know. He never tells me where he goes. He just wanders off. He never talks to anyone”<br/>
Phil wasn’t angry, but he was disappointed. Really disappointed.</p><p>When Tubbo came home that night, it was almost 1 am.<br/>
“Toby… are you out of your mind? Have you looked at the time at all? All day? Your classes were over at 3 pm. Tommy was here by half-past three. Why haven’t I seen you in ten hours?”<br/>
“None of your business, Phil”, Tubbo said and stepped into the light of the dimly lit hallway.<br/>
He was covered in mud head-to-toe. It hadn’t rained in weeks as this was a particularly dry summer.<br/>
“Where have you been?” Now Phil’s voice was significantly louder than it had ever gotten towards Tubbo. “Why do you look like that? What in the name of…”<br/>
“I said it’s none of your business, Phil”<br/>
Tubbo did not dare to raise his voice against his father. He was quiet, almost a little frightened. It was hard to tell if he was afraid of Phil… or whatever had happened out there today.<br/>
“Listen to me, young man. There are two possibilities here. Tell me where you were. If there is anything out there that pressures you into things you don’t wanna do because they’re wrong, I will help you. I will get you out of there. And… if you messed up… done something wrong… just tell me. I won’t shout. You know I won’t hit you. But you need to be honest to me, Toby. Otherwise, this will only get worse”<br/>
He knew, whatever Toby had been up to, it couldn’t be this bad. This was Tubbo after all. Sweet, little, innocent Tubbo. Maybe a little too quiet, too much of a push-over, too gullible. But it was Tubbo. He’d never do something as bad as lock a kid in an abandoned shack in the woods for an entire weekend or egg his drama teacher’s house every night for a whole week.<br/>
(Not that Phil wouldn’t have known how to deal with these kinda problems. He raised Techno and Wilbur after all)<br/>
“I don’t wanna tell you, Phil”<br/>
And then, Tubbo climbed up the stairs.</p><p>Phil was defeated. He always had been a strong, confident man. In his younger years, many would have even called a hero. He wasn’t self-centred, he even was quite humble, but he always was treated with respect.<br/>
And while Techno and Wilbur hadn’t been exactly easy, they never, ever dared to speak back to him.<br/>
Tubbo didn’t say a word to Phil for five days.<br/>
And on three of these, he was gone again. For hours and hours.<br/>
Tubbo didn’t even speak to Tommy or his adoptive mother.<br/>
Phil was really hurt by this, but everything got even worse when one morning, his wife woke him up before dawn.<br/>
“Tubbo’s not here. He’s not in his bed. He was there last evening… he might’ve been gone all night”<br/>
Phil, his wife and Tommy searched the house and the hole yard (they owned a pretty big piece of land including a sizeable chunk of the forest behind their old renovated farm house), but no trace of Tubbo.<br/>
Tommy rung all of the people from school he knew at least occasionally hung out with Tubbo. None of them knew where he was.<br/>
And then, by 11 am, the hot summer sun was scorching at had turned the driveway into a hot stone plate perfect for bbq, the lost son appeared.<br/>
Wearing a mysterious long dark green coat, covered in mud but also… a big, burned, bleeding scar along his entire upper left arm.<br/>
Phil was the first to see him, he ran out and hugged his boy, not caring for all the mud and grime he was covered in.<br/>
“Tubbo! You had us worried sick. Are you feeling alright? What has happened?”<br/>
That’s when Phil noticed the scar. He realized it was very similar to the one that had partially disfigured his boy’s face when he was just a little kid.<br/>
He then realized how much of Tubbo’s coat was covered in blood. If all of this was his own blood…<br/>
“You mustn’t tell Mum. Or Tommy. Promise Dad. Promise”<br/>
This was probably the fourth or fifth time total Tubbo had called him Dad. Ever.<br/>
“Okay… okay… I promise. Just tell me… where have you been sneaking off to? Where have you been tonight? All morning?”<br/>
“Dad… I’m a Dreamon hunter”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. An offer not to turn down</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Tubbo meets a mysterious boy in the woods who tells him the possible truth of his mysterious path, and intern opens the gates to an even more mysterious future.</p><p>I hope you enjoy this one, see you next time you beautiful people &lt;3</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It all started on a hot, scorching summer day.<br/>Tubbo just finished his last class that day. He couldn’t wait for the holidays to start, but luckily there were only two dreadful weeks of school left.<br/>He knew school would be a lot easier if he was like one of his brothers; popular, funny, confident.<br/>Ever since him and Tommy didn’t share any classes anymore, he basically had no friends at school.<br/>Of course, there were a few guys he was occasionally talking to, but no one he really, really cared about.</p><p>His feet carried him off campus, as he took a detour through the woods.<br/>He used to take the same way home as Tommy, down the main street to the bus stop, where it would take them up the winding roads of the suburbs to the edge of town, where the big farmhouse stood.<br/>But lately, Tubbo preferred the walk through the forest behind the school. Through the dense shrubbery, a dozen narrow pathways crept like the strands of a spider web. The house was just on the other side of the hill, so it took him almost the same time as taking the bus.<br/>The first few days he got lost in the dark woods, but now he was very accustomed to the paths and knew his way around. He would be one time today.<br/>Or at least, he would’ve been.<br/>If he were alone that day.<br/>He heard footsteps behind the thick, dark bushes that didn’t sound like the noises of the forest. There were no big animals awake during the day that roamed around here, so close to town.<br/>He turned around several times. He never met anyone here. Maybe today was the first day? But the path behind him was empty.<br/>He continued his journey, but then he saw it; not behind him but upon a hillock cowered a person.<br/>He froze. The light was merely behind them so he had trouble figuring out what was going on, but the person seemed to be on their knees, wearing what could have been a cape or a long coat.<br/>Tubbo dared not make a sound.<br/>He just watched, his blood frozen and his breath held.<br/>The person turned their head. Towards or away from him?<br/>The question was answered shortly.<br/>Whoever the mysterious stranger was, they moved swiftly between the stems of the spruce trees, and through the shrubbery, so Tubbo lost sight of them.<br/>They approached incredibly quickly, and as they jumped him from behind, tackling him down onto the leaves-covered floor, he let out a short, high pitched scream.<br/>“Who are you?”<br/>The stranger’s voice was raspy, exhausted and spoke with an American accent.<br/>“I’m… I’m… who are you?! Let me go!”, Tubbo protested, his face still pressed into the dirt.<br/>“That’s none of your business. Noone’s ever here. Were you spying on me or something?”<br/>“NO!”, Tubbo protested, trying to wiggle free. The stranger only held him down more forcefully. “I’m just… I’m on my way home from school… my house is on the other side of the hills… please…”<br/>The stranger seemed to notice Tubbo’s backpack that he was currently kneeling in.<br/>“Looks like you’re telling the truth” He let go and Tubbo got onto his knees.<br/>“I have no intention of hurting an innocent little school girl. Go home, forget you ever saw me and never take this route again. Do you und-”<br/>“First of all, I’m not a girl.”, Tubbo said as he wiped away leaves from his uniform and turned around, “And second of all who ar-” “AAAAH!”<br/>The stranger screamed and stumbled backwards.<br/>It was a boy, probably only a few years older than Tubbo, but certainly younger than Wilbur or Techno.<br/>“What? What is it?”<br/>“YOUR FACE”, the other boy screamed and was hectically searching the pockets of his long, dark green trench coat for… whatever it was.<br/>“I… my face? Oh… you mean…” His fingers touched the grainy skin around his left eye and on his forehead where he had been burnt as an infant.<br/>“It’s just a scar from when my house burned down as a…”<br/>OH no no no it’s not”, the other boy said, “That my friend is the scar of a Dreamon attack. How… how are you alive?”<br/>He held a small metal device in his shaking hand as he brought it up to Tubbo’s face.<br/>He couldn’t see what it did, but it made a few high-pitched metallic noises before the boy took it down.<br/>“You’re safe. You have no Dreamon energy within you”<br/>“What? Dreamon? You’re mental. You seriously believe in this childish fairytale? Do you also believe in the boogeyman?”<br/>The other boy let out a rough laugh. He pushed the sleeve of his jacket to reveal a scar, just like Tubbo’s, that covered the boy’s entire right arm. It didn’t look burned. It looked like it was… eaten alive… by something with no teeth.<br/>“Oh yes, I believe in Dreamons. And so should you”</p><p>Dreamons are beings from a different realm, outside of the world of the living.<br/>Tubbo’s adoptive father Phil was a war hero, as he had fought monsters in his youth, saved innocent lives and protected many from harm.<br/>But Dreamons, as the boy explained to him, were no monsters. Monsters were alive. Monsters could die. Dreamons could never die.<br/>They existed outside our world, in a realm so dark and so abysmal, those who had fallen into it would not escape. Their soul would be torn apart in the blink of an eye, but the Dreamons would torture them and make it feel like aeons.<br/>The boy had taken Tubbo up the hill, where he had dropped a bag full of weird, occultist stuff, along with a bowler hat that matched his long coat.<br/>His hair was dark and a little shaggy, held back by a white bandana that was just as dirty and covered in soil as the rest of him.<br/>He had a beard which made him look older than he actually was, but it suited his rugged looks.<br/>He refused to tell Tubbo his name, even if Tubbo had introduced himself.<br/>“Never… never tell anyone you cannot trust a 100% your real name”, he had said as he was kneeling down again, putting all of his McGuffins back into the bag.<br/>“Well… it’s just a nickname, really. My real name is…”<br/>“NO!”, the boy interrupted him, “I don’t wanna hear it. Tubbo sounds good to me. What if I were a Dreamon in disguise and you just told me your name? You’re foolish. Really foolish”<br/>“How… how am I foolish? I don’t know anything about Dreamons. I just heard about them for the first time… I mean… since I was five”<br/>He remembered that Phil did not like telling stories about Dreamons. He knew about Dreamons before he was adopted, so his biological parents must’ve told him about them.<br/>But whenever Tubbo or Tommy asked their parents to tell them a scary story about Dreamons, they refused. Especially Phil.<br/>“My… father… always refused to tell me about Dreamons”, he said, “He never wanted to speak of them”<br/>“Well isn’t it obvious?”, the boy said and got up, putting his hat back on, “Your father… knows about Dreamons. The real ones. Not the fairytale ones. And he didn’t wanna talk about them, because he knew they’re nothing to joke about. Especially with you… surviving the attack of one of them”<br/>“Are you sure? He always told me our horse must’ve burned down… and he found me like that. I was the sole survivor”<br/>The other boy took a deep breath. “I think he lied to you, to protect you. He didn’t want you to know what the Dreamons really did to your family”<br/>Tubbo sighed. He could not believe this. But the scar on that boy’s arm… it looked so real. So dark. So disturbing.<br/>“You know Dreamons, don’t you? You know a lot?”<br/>“I do”, the boy said, his eyes drifting off into the distance. “I am… I am a Dreamon Hunter. I dedicated my life to the cause of hunting Dreamons that manage to appear in our world, chase them back to where they came from and cure those that have been possessed by Dreamon. It’s a noble cause, but it’s not a beautiful life. My mentor died two years ago whilst trying to save me and my comrade from being swallowed by the darkness that escaped from the abyss… That’s where I nearly lost my arm. He pulled me out from the mist… only to be swallowed by it whole. It wasn’t nice to watch”<br/>Both boys were quiet for a moment as the most terrifying images of being swallowed by the mist from a bottomless, soulless, hopeless pit filled every crevice of Tubbo’s mind.<br/>“But… you are a hero. You save people from death… or probably… things worse than death. Why… why aren’t you celebrated everywhere?”<br/>“The thing is, Tubbo… people can’t know about Dreamons. The more people that know about Dreamons, the thinner the fragile barricade between their realm and ours gets. If the existence of these beasts were common knowledge… the world could end today. We need to keep Dreamons a secret. And therefore, we need to keep Dreamon Hunters a secret”<br/>Tubbo took a deep breath.<br/>“You… you told me. You don’t even know me. Why?”<br/>“You… you’re scar. I have never seen a civilian with a Dreamon scar. Nobody survives the attack of a Dreamon strong enough to leave such a permanent mark on your physical body without professional help. But if a Hunter was present during the attack on your family… why wouldn’t he have saved you? The truth is… something about you kept you save. I am sure about that. Tubbo… I need your help. WE need your help”<br/>Tubbo felt a really, really bad feeling in his stomach. It was cold and yucky and he felt like throwing up. He wandered if a microscopic portal to the abyss had opened in his small intestine.<br/>“Do you wanna be a Dreamon Hunter, Tubbo?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I decided to portray Sapnap as a mix of his real-life looks and his MC skin. I feel like I somehow achieved those two to come together harmoniously</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. In Sapnap's workshop</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Tubbo's first visit of "the hive"</p><p>~</p><p>See you next time, you wonderful people &lt;3<br/>Sorry for the wait</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“He’s too young”, one boy said.<br/>“We were a lot younger when we first started going out there”, his comrade replied.<br/>“We weren’t alone”, the first one returned.<br/>“Now that we have no mentor… he’d only have us. We’re barely fully trained ourselves”<br/>Tubbo felt really weird hearing the two guys argue about him.<br/>“Well, I can’t send him back. First of all, look at his scar. He survived a major Dreamon attack. He is far too powerful to not have him on our team. On the other side… he knows too much. We can’t let someone who has seen this much just… walk-off…”<br/>His friend looked really annoyed. “We can’t let him go. But he can’t be a hunter”<br/>“But…”<br/>“No buts”</p><p>Less than an hour earlier, the dark-haired Dreamon Hunter had taken Tubbo’s hand and dragged him deeper into the woods to a ring of tree stumps in a clearing on a hillock.<br/>The air grew denser and the sounds of the forest completely vanished.<br/>He had no idea how he knew, but he was very sure there was magic in this place. Somehow.<br/>The Dreamon Hunter paced an erratic pattern between the stumps, touching the tops, seemingly looking for… something.<br/>“This will take us to one of our hide-outs. I will need to show you a lot more, Tubbo”<br/>Tubbo was really nervous.<br/>He had agreed to join the hunters, but he still had a lot of doubts.<br/>Whatever these Dreamons were… they had killed his biological family. And even if he did remember next to nothing about them, that kinda hurt.<br/>Also… something Phil was scared of? What had they done to him? He needed to know more.<br/>But he was also really scared. If Dreamons were as powerful as the boy said - immortal, from an otherworldly, abysmal realm - how could he, Tubbo, even stand a chance?<br/>But apparently, he once did. As a little kid. So why not now?<br/>“Here it is”, the dark-haired hunter called him.<br/>Into the top of the trunk, a dark symbol was carved. It was a weird, asymmetric rune, and Tubbo felt the magic radiate from the ancient cracks in the wood. But in contrast to the bad feeling he had when he saw the scar on the boy’s arm, he wasn’t scared now.<br/>It was old, mysterious sorcery at play here, but it wasn’t evil in nature.<br/>He took a deep breath. “What is this?”<br/>“It’s a pathfinder rune. It can take us to one of our hide-outs. Just… take my hand…”<br/>Tubbo didn’t hesitate and grabbed the extended hand. The boy’s skin was rough and slightly callused, but his grip wasn’t too firm. He held Tubbo’s hand gently, as he pressed his other palm into the rune and both boys were sucked into a magical wormhole.</p><p>It was like being forced through a thin rubber tube and for a second, Tubbo’s lungs felt like they were filled with a dense foam that clogged his windpipe.<br/>The next moment, he stumbled into a dark, presumable underground room.<br/>The air smelled of spices he couldn’t pinpoint, and the sound of metallic clanks and mechanical blasts echoed in his ears from a distance.<br/>The boy had let go of his hand and flicked the lights on.<br/>They were stood in a small workshop with a low ceiling, from which next to an old lightbulb, bundles of spices and herbs dangled so low, he had to push one of them away out of his view.<br/>The hunter had hung his jacket onto a hook on the metallic wall and now dropped himself onto an old, questionably stained office chair.<br/>The desk in front of them was covered in a three-inch layer of papers, most of them greyed out, pictures, newspapers, notes. On top of the avalanche of paper rested about three dozens of little mechanical McGuffins, piles of herbs, crystals that sparkled in dark ember and spruce green as the light of the lamp hit them.<br/>“Is this… Dreamon hunter gear?”<br/>“Yup”, the other one said with a proud grin.<br/>“Most of these devices are either broken or I am still working on them… always developing new mechanisms to track and contain Dreamons and other beasts from the abyss.<br/>Tubbo dared not to step closer, let alone touch anything he saw.<br/>“And all these weeds… and dried flowers…”<br/>“Potion ingredients”, the hunter explained, leaning back and stretching his arms.<br/>“I’m not really good at brewing, but I dry them in here. The smell isn’t the worst and if me, my workshop and my clothes smell of protective herbs, Dreamons are less likely to approach. It also helps against ghouls and zombies and vampires…”<br/>Tubbo’s eyes had fixated on a small, heart-shaped crystal whose ember sparks danced in its perfect cut and reflected in an empty bottle on the shelf next to it.<br/>“Oh… don’t pay much attention to that. It has no purpose in hunting. Just… a gift someone gave me. We use crystals to trap dreamonic energy and channel dark powers for our use, but this one is not dense enough to store that kinda magic. If I tried to absorb just an ounce of Dreamon into it… it’d burst”<br/>Tubbo managed to pull his eyes away from the magic crystal and noticed a sign nailed to the wall. An inexperienced hand had carved the words “Sapnap’s room” into the light wood, and, by the discolouration of the material, added “Keep out” a few years later.<br/>“Who’s…”<br/>“Me”, came the answer from behind Tubbo. “I am Sapnap. At least… that’s my hunter’s name. Like I said… we don’t use our real names here. Too dangerous”<br/>“You know what’s also too dangerous? Bringing strangers into the hive without asking me first”</p><p>That was a voice Tubbo hadn’t heard before.<br/>Both him and Sapnap spun around to see the figure of a young man, about Sapnap’s age, leaning against the doorframe.<br/>His pale face was illuminated by the old bulb in the workshop, but not enough to fully make out his features.<br/>His voice was higher than Sapnap’s and his accent was harder to pinpoint, but Tubbo had no time to really think about that, because the stranger walked over to him, grabbed him by the collar and pushed him against a shelf full of old, worn-out books, bottles with viscous potions and shiny crystals.<br/>All of that rattled and jingled against each other as he was shoved into the metal frame that cut into his back.<br/>“Who are you? What are you?”<br/>Because the shabby light source was now behind the new man, Tubbo could make out even less about him, but he could tell he smelled a lot like those herbs, probably even more so than the workshop itself.<br/>The stranger, tho, had a lot more light to see Tubbo’s face, to see Tubbo’s scar.<br/>He dropped him to the floor, and Tubbo managed to stay on his feet, even though his knees felt a lot weaker.<br/>“He has a Dreamon scar. Don’t tell me… you saved him from an attack”</p><p>Sapnap explained to his comrade where and how he found Tubbo, what happened to him and how he decided to make Tubbo a Dreamon Hunter just like them.<br/>“No buts”, the other hunter, who was named Fundy as Tubbo found out through both men arguing, replied again.<br/>“I don’t want him here”<br/>He had moved to Sapnap’s chair after he stood up and walked over to Tubbo.<br/>With the yellowish light on his face, Tubbo could now see more of him.<br/>Fundy had shorter hair than Sapnap, but it was just as rugged and deserving of a proper cut as his. The more interesting fact about it, tho, were the patches of discolouration that were spread across his scalp.<br/>Tubbo wondered if these white strands of hair were the result of some genetic pigment disorder or maybe… the result of dreamonic magic.<br/>“Fundy…”, Tubbo said now, and both him and Sapnap turned to him, surprised.<br/>“I really, REALLY want to become a Dreamon hunter. They killed my old family. I am afraid they might kill my new one too. Sapnap said there might be a possibility that I have certain powers… protective powers that saved me from the abyss as a child. What… what if I could learn to use these powers? Not only to protect me and my family… but also you guys? You could teach me in the way of the hunt, and I could learn how to be a valuable asset to your team. Please… rethink your decision”<br/>Fundy sighed and got up. The light stubble on his chin and the deep bags under his eyes showed how exhausted and sleep-deprived he seemed to be.<br/>Sapnap would later assure Tubbo Fundy was a lot nicer and more welcoming on a good day.<br/>“Listen, kid…”<br/>“My name is Tubbo”<br/>“Listen, Tubbo… this is serious. Very serious. Very dangerous. More dangerous than anything you will ever do. More dangerous than anybody you know ever did. You can’t take this choice lightly. Not anyone is born to be a Dreamon Hunter”<br/>“Okay but tell me”, Tubbo argued, and he felt a sudden rush of confidence he was not used to, “Tell me who is born to be a hunter, if not me, the one who survived a Dreamon attack on my own when I was four. If I could do it then, I can probably do it now. Probably even better”<br/>Fundy shook his head and walked to the door.<br/>Tubbo followed him, trying to think of anything to say. He looked to Sapnap who was just as disappointed and incensed as him.<br/>“Fundy listen you can’t…”<br/>But his comrade cut him off, without turning back to the two boys in the workshop. He was already out in the dark hallway.<br/>“Tubbo… you can stay. But if there is the slightest sign of weakness. Of fear. Of incapability… you’re out. Got that?”<br/>Tubbo felt the relief within him. He knew the stakes were high. But he was ready. “Yessir. I will be the best hunter you ever…”<br/>“Hey. Don’t promise something you can’t keep”, Fundy said and looked back for a moment. “Let’s start by making you A hunter. Because you are not there yet”<br/>Fundy left, the others looked at each other.<br/>Sapnap grinned and gave Tubbo a hug who stumbled back by the sudden sign of affection.<br/>“Welcome to the hive, kid”</p>
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